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Fearless in the face of
tyranny

The Times, UK November 25, 2006

Simon Caldwell

Archbishop Pius Ncube
of Bulawayo, in London this week, is a resolute opponent of the Mugabe
regime

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, the
Most Rev Pius Ncube, is a slightly shy, softly spoken and humble man -
characteristics that may seem to contrast with his leonine courage in the
face of President Mugabe's tyranny. He also appears tired. As
he sinks back into his chair at the London headquarters of Cafod, the
overseas development agency of the Catholic Church of England and Wales, he
seems to carry in his demeanour the desperation of his country's poor. It
looks as if his long struggle with Robert Mugabe may be taking its
toll.

It has been seven years since Mugabe triggered
the decline of his country by ordering "war veterans" to invade white-owned
farms after he lost a constitutional referendum. As Mugabe seized control of
the judiciary and the press, rigged elections, demolished shanty towns -
making 700,000 people destitute - and starved his political opponents,
Archbishop Ncube came to prominence as the archetypal turbulent priest,
Mugabe's most implacably defiant domestic opponent, vowing to continue to
speak the truth even though his name was rumoured to be on a secret "death
list".

There are worse things than martyrdom to a man of the
stature of Archbishop Ncube, however. Among them is the realisation that
people are losing interest in his cause. Earlier this week in London he
admitted to a private meeting of MPs and peers that the plight of Zimbabwe
was now largely a "forgotten issue".

"We cannot compete
for attention in a world fixated by events in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan and
elsewhere," he said. "Yet we need the international community to maintain
pressure on Zanu PF [the ruling party] now as much as
ever."

Although his trip to London was to raise money for a
charity for Aids victims, the Archbishop made sure that his audience
understood that Zimbabwe had become a world leader for all the wrong
reasons.

They heard that it has one of the highest Aids rates
in the world, with almost a quarter of the 12 million population infected. A
combination of malnutrition, poverty and Aids claims 3,500 lives a week, a
death rate higher even than the conflict in Darfur and the war in Iraq. This
has resulted in Zimbabwe having the lowest life expectancy in the world - 34
for women and 37 for men.

The rate of inflation stands at
2,000 per cent, the highest in the world. Zimbabwe also has the world's
fastest-declining economy, shrinking by 40 per cent in the past six years,
and 80 per cent unemployment. The World Food Programme estimates that 6.1
million people are facing starvation in a country that was once so fertile
that it used to be known as the "breadbasket of Africa".

Yet, as Archbishop Ncube pointed out, "Zimbabwe is not a nation at war". Nor
is it possible for these figures "just to be blamed on Aids".

He implies that Mugabe has been complicit in the deaths of his people
through a combination of oppression and neglect. But getting anything done
about it is difficult. The Archbishop's interventions have failed to
persuade South Africa to provide a regional solution to the crisis - the
best chance for the people of Zimbabwe - but have succeeded in incurring
police harassment and smears of the state-run media.

Such
trials have been compounded by betrayals from those he sees as friends or
seeks to help. In September Archbishop Ncube attended the episcopal
ordination of Dieter Sholz, a German-born Jesuit. Mugabe was also there and
afterwards courted the congregation with a 35-minute speech. Archbishop
Ncube balked when the crowd applauded enthusiastically. "As far as I was
concerned, they should not have clapped for him, ever," he
said.

Then, a month later, Archbishop Ncube was furious when
a statement issued by the Churches called The Zimbabwe We Want: Toward a
National Vision was sabotaged by the Government before it was printed.
"Mugabe's cronies took it and removed a whole load of pages," he said. "That
was supposed to be our document. They totally changed the terminology. That
shows that the man [Mugabe] is not ready to change."

The
statement, he explained, must have been leaked to the Government by one of a
number of pastors who were beginning to side with Mugabe and who had become
"disloyal to God and to the people".

Archbishop Ncube said it
was typical of Mr Mugabe to turn up at Pope John Paul II's funeral, to stand
among world leaders and then to "force himself on Prince Charles" in a
"rude" manner during the sign of peace. Two months later the archbishop
found himself at the Vatican too, but taking issue with Pope Benedict XVI
for welcoming rigged parliamentary election results as "a new beginning in
the process of national reconciliation and the moral rebuilding of
society".

"I informed him that things were bad and Mugabe was
oppressing the people and shouldn't be encouraged," he said, adding that the
Pope was deeply sympathetic.

The Archbishop does not know
where the problems with Mugabe will end, but he suspects a Pauline
conversion is out of the question. The bishops tried that three years ago in
a four-hour meeting that brought the President and Archbishop Ncube face to
face. "We talked to him about the problems," the Archbishop recalls. "The
inflation, the starvation, the corruption, the youth militia, the violence,
and told him that he should talk to the [Movement for Democratic Change]
opposition to finish the problems. He was very
defensive."

He continued: "The problem is that Mugabe thinks
he is our owner. He is such an arrogant and proud man and he thinks he owns
us and can go around bullying us. Mugabe is so much in love with power that
he hasn't even groomed a successor. We are kind of held to
ransom."

For Archbishop Ncube, the only remaining hope is to
educate young people about the necessity for them to make governments
accountable for their policies. But this seems a distant prospect given the
desperation that has gripped the country and the pledge of Zanu-PF to rule
until "Jesus comes again".

But things must change. Mugabe
turns 83 in February and there is a strong chance that Archbishop Ncube, who
is 60 on December 31, will outlive him. Meanwhile he will need the patience
of Job and the inner peace that only God can give.

Fleeing Mugabe: Crossing the Limpopo

The Independent, UK

Three to five
million people have poured over 'Africa's Rio Grande', fleeing meltdown in
Zimbabwe for the promised land. But the flood of humanity is bringing crisis
to South Africa. By Daniel Howden on the LimpopoPublished: 24 November
2006Following in the footsteps of Rudyard Kipling's Elephant's Child, "I am
going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about by fever
trees, to find out what the crocodile has for dinner." It is first light on
the Limpopo and its banks are set about with fever trees, their
golden-balled flowers opening to greet the day but there's no grey-green,
greasy flow, not even a trickle. The river is dry.

A crowd of
footprints break the earth where the bank meets the riverbed in the shadow
of giant baobab tree. Before dawn, dozens of border jumpers were huddled
here waiting for a signal from the far bank. A trampled cap has been left
behind.

Their tracks strike out for the middle of the once-mighty river.
Somewhere out there is Zimbabwe's border with South Africa. This trodden
earth is now being called Africa's Rio Grande as thousands of impoverished
Zimbabweans flee the meltdown of their country and seek illegal entry to the
promised land. It is a frontier of renegade soldiers, human traffickers,
embattled farmers, crocodiles and leopards.

Andrew is one of the few
holding out. A white farmer, he now camps on what used to be his land,
waiting to see if things will change. Pointing at the sandal prints in the
riverbed he says: "If I were them, that's what I would do. On this side,
their wages are worthless. Their only chance for survival is to get across
the border to earn what they can in rands and smuggle it back."

On
the far bank, there are three walls of fencing, erected in the apartheid era
they are relics of an old battle that now form the frontline of a new
crisis. Put up by the white government of the little-lamented P W Botha they
were originally an electrified barrier to the guerrillas of the
ANC.

Today's South African government is run by the ANC and needs the
fences to stem the tide from the north that has been stoking internal
discontent. A decade on from the birth of the rainbow nation, many ordinary
South Africans are still waiting for their dividend. In this politically
tense atmosphere, mass migration has sparked the first signs of
black-on-black racism

Far from an impenetrable barrier, the power was
turned off more than a decade ago, and the fences are shredded. President
Thabo Mbeki is now under intense domestic pressure to close the border to
illegals. Thousands of border police fight a daily battle in South Africa to
drive back the Zimbabweans and those that get through to Johannesburg face
often brutal migrant sweeps and unpleasant stays in the notorious Lindela
holding camp.

The Limpopo, however, is their lifeline and they will keep
coming.

Nobody knows how many Zimbabweans have headed south, estimates
stretch anywhere from three million to five million. But this human traffic
has now become a stampede.

The border post at Beitbridge is a crash
course in the complexities of a country in freefall. The town, such as it
is, grew up around a bridge built in 1920 by the German mining tycoon Alfred
Beit. Developers have flanked the road with shining filling stations and
supermarkets with asphalt car parks.

But this is a charade. There is no
petrol or diesel at the pumps. The car parks are empty. At the supermarket,
the prices change hourly. Economists expect Zimbabwe's inflation rate to
pass 2,000 per cent this year. To put that startling number in context, the
next worst rate in the world is Burma with 60 per cent. Since the turn of
the century, this country's once sophisticated economy has shrunk by half.
The result is 80 per cent unemployment, and 85 per cent of the population
living in poverty.

It was not always so. When, in 1980, Robert Mugabe won
the first free elections in independent Zimbabwe, he was feted by Western
liberals as a beacon of hope for Africa and hailed by his people as a
liberator. His early approach of soothing racial rivalries and respecting
property rights encouraged many. But that was never the whole truth. Soon
after taking power, he launched a brutal pogrom, the Gukuruhundi, against
the minority Ndebele people, killing as many as 10,000. By 1995, when Nelson
Mandela came to Beitbridge to open a new bridge and salute the liberator, Mr
Mugabe's grip on power was starting to loosen. His strategy for holding on
was to rip the country apart.

With a cynical eye on the restless
veterans of the independence war he turned on the white population in 1998,
accused them of being traitors and launched a chaotic and destructive series
of farm invasions dressed as land reform. Zimbabwe plummeted from feast to
famine. A country that fed its neighbours was forced to accept emergency
food aid as agricultural output was decimated and foreign currency reserves
collapsed. It did, however, allow Mugabe to shore up his power base. Thanks
to carefully engineered elections and the political control of food aid he
now stands largely unchallenged, the opposition in splinters.

Sitting
slumped in a chair in his office, Pius Ncube looks tired. The Catholic
Bishop of Bulawayo is one of Mugabe's last remaining public critics. His
anger and eloquence have provided a rallying call amid the rivalries and
splits of an opposition poisoned from within by agents of the secret police.
"We're in a state of paralysis. What can we do? We have neither a leader nor
a credible party. People are so afraid."

On the walls, a parade of black
and white saints vie for space with secular heroes. A beaming Nelson Mandela
sits two icons away from a portrait of Martin Luther King. "We need a
Mandela, a Gandhi. Someone to stand up against Mugabe and kick this man
out."

Ncube leans forward, eyes half closed and his voice quiet as a
whisper. " We're on a silent march to I don't know where... Why must we be
held to ransom by one silly man."

Zimbabwe's real economy, or what's
left of it, is in the teeming slums and flea markets that surround the
ghostly modern Beitbridge. Here everything is for sale. Filthy single-storey
brothels service the lorry drivers. No one is testing for HIV - they don't
need to; the infection rates are near total. Touts rush to open car windows
offering petrol, paraffin, hard currency, all the things that can only be
bought on the black market. Bundles of the monopoly money of hyper-inflation
are passed shiftily from hand to hand.

Everyone knows they are being
watched. Mugabe's spies are everywhere. The secret police of the Central
Intelligence Organisation - plain clothes informants - they are on the
look-out for smugglers, border hoppers, opposition members, anyone who could
pose a threat or offer an income. They are also on the look-out for
journalists. The Mugabe regime would rather the world looked elsewhere, so
reporting without permission now carries a two-year prison
sentence.

On the other side of Beitbridge, there is a new camp for the
deported migrants. Wilson is standing behind a tall wire fence, leaning on
an automatic rifle and wearing an outsized uniform. Despite working as the
camp's guard he has time to talk.

"It's been a quiet day," he says,
gesturing in the direction of hundreds of exhausted looking people standing
in a queue that snakes twice round a white tent. The people are deportees,
rounded up in Johannesburg and dumped en masse back across the border by
South African police. "We usually get about 600 to 700 a day." They are
queuing for a meal, paid for by the International Organisation for
Migration. They will then take an arduous four-hour bus journey north to
Bulawayo where many will begin the long march back to the border. "Most of
them will go straight back across again," he says with a shrug.

As
night closes in on the northern outskirts of the border town, the rusted
pick-ups wait for fresh border jumpers. They are beginning to fan out along
the 170-mile frontier and deliver their human cargo to the staging posts
where they can start their dangerous trek again.

Hours from anywhere
in the deep bush, torches shine angrily at the windscreen. The scratched
barrel of an AK-47 pokes through the open window, holding on to it is a
skinny looking soldier. A calm exchange follows. Questions are asked about
the white man in the passenger seat but the soldier knows the driver so
nothing ensues.

"Why do you think he's out here in the cold in the middle
of the night?" The driver asks.

He answers himself: "He's
freelancing. No one pays him to guard this track he's here to get bribes
from the traffickers."

On the other side of the border the same rules
apply. Mistreatment of migrants is commonplace according to Human Rights
Watch and police see vulnerable migrants as a ready source of income. With
no child soldiers or civil war, South Africans don't understand what
Zimbabweans are running from.

Despite the brutal dictatorship in
their northern neighbour only 114 Zimbabweans were granted refugee status
last year. The others are shepherded into disease-ridden camps before being
shunted back across.

Any day now, the rains will come and the greasy tide
will wash away the tracks. Kipling never actually saw the Limpopo or its
fever trees. But when the grey-green water starts to flow the desperate
people will form human chains across the river holding hands to ford the
strong current. Those that can't hold on will be washed away, offering a
darker answer to the Elephant Child who asked: "What does the crocodile have
for dinner?"

Following in the footsteps of Rudyard Kipling's Elephant's
Child, "I am going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set
about by fever trees, to find out what the crocodile has for dinner." It is
first light on the Limpopo and its banks are set about with fever trees,
their golden-balled flowers opening to greet the day but there's no
grey-green, greasy flow, not even a trickle. The river is dry.

A
crowd of footprints break the earth where the bank meets the riverbed in the
shadow of giant baobab tree. Before dawn, dozens of border jumpers were
huddled here waiting for a signal from the far bank. A trampled cap has been
left behind.

Their tracks strike out for the middle of the
once-mighty river. Somewhere out there is Zimbabwe's border with South
Africa. This trodden earth is now being called Africa's Rio Grande as
thousands of impoverished Zimbabweans flee the meltdown of their country and
seek illegal entry to the promised land. It is a frontier of renegade
soldiers, human traffickers, embattled farmers, crocodiles and
leopards.

Andrew is one of the few holding out. A white farmer, he now
camps on what used to be his land, waiting to see if things will change.
Pointing at the sandal prints in the riverbed he says: "If I were them,
that's what I would do. On this side, their wages are worthless. Their only
chance for survival is to get across the border to earn what they can in
rands and smuggle it back."

On the far bank, there are three walls of
fencing, erected in the apartheid era they are relics of an old battle that
now form the frontline of a new crisis. Put up by the white government of
the little-lamented P W Botha they were originally an electrified barrier to
the guerrillas of the ANC.

Today's South African government is run by the
ANC and needs the fences to stem the tide from the north that has been
stoking internal discontent. A decade on from the birth of the rainbow
nation, many ordinary South Africans are still waiting for their dividend.
In this politically tense atmosphere, mass migration has sparked the first
signs of black-on-black racism

Far from an impenetrable barrier, the
power was turned off more than a decade ago, and the fences are shredded.
President Thabo Mbeki is now under intense domestic pressure to close the
border to illegals. Thousands of border police fight a daily battle in South
Africa to drive back the Zimbabweans and those that get through to
Johannesburg face often brutal migrant sweeps and unpleasant stays in the
notorious Lindela holding camp.

The Limpopo, however, is their lifeline
and they will keep coming.

Nobody knows how many Zimbabweans have headed
south, estimates stretch anywhere from three million to five million. But
this human traffic has now become a stampede.

The border post at
Beitbridge is a crash course in the complexities of a country in freefall.
The town, such as it is, grew up around a bridge built in 1920 by the German
mining tycoon Alfred Beit. Developers have flanked the road with shining
filling stations and supermarkets with asphalt car parks.

But this is a
charade. There is no petrol or diesel at the pumps. The car parks are empty.
At the supermarket, the prices change hourly. Economists expect Zimbabwe's
inflation rate to pass 2,000 per cent this year. To put that startling
number in context, the next worst rate in the world is Burma with 60 per
cent. Since the turn of the century, this country's once sophisticated
economy has shrunk by half. The result is 80 per cent unemployment, and 85
per cent of the population living in poverty.

It was not always so. When,
in 1980, Robert Mugabe won the first free elections in independent Zimbabwe,
he was feted by Western liberals as a beacon of hope for Africa and hailed
by his people as a liberator. His early approach of soothing racial
rivalries and respecting property rights encouraged many. But that was never
the whole truth. Soon after taking power, he launched a brutal pogrom, the
Gukuruhundi, against the minority Ndebele people, killing as many as 10,000.
By 1995, when Nelson Mandela came to Beitbridge to open a new bridge and
salute the liberator, Mr Mugabe's grip on power was starting to loosen. His
strategy for holding on was to rip the country apart.

With a
cynical eye on the restless veterans of the independence war he turned on
the white population in 1998, accused them of being traitors and launched a
chaotic and destructive series of farm invasions dressed as land reform.
Zimbabwe plummeted from feast to famine. A country that fed its neighbours
was forced to accept emergency food aid as agricultural output was decimated
and foreign currency reserves collapsed. It did, however, allow Mugabe to
shore up his power base. Thanks to carefully engineered elections and the
political control of food aid he now stands largely unchallenged, the
opposition in splinters.

Sitting slumped in a chair in his office, Pius
Ncube looks tired. The Catholic Bishop of Bulawayo is one of Mugabe's last
remaining public critics. His anger and eloquence have provided a rallying
call amid the rivalries and splits of an opposition poisoned from within by
agents of the secret police. "We're in a state of paralysis. What can we do?
We have neither a leader nor a credible party. People are so
afraid."

On the walls, a parade of black and white saints vie for space
with secular heroes. A beaming Nelson Mandela sits two icons away from a
portrait of Martin Luther King. "We need a Mandela, a Gandhi. Someone to
stand up against Mugabe and kick this man out."

Ncube leans forward,
eyes half closed and his voice quiet as a whisper. " We're on a silent march
to I don't know where... Why must we be held to ransom by one silly
man."

Zimbabwe's real economy, or what's left of it, is in the teeming
slums and flea markets that surround the ghostly modern Beitbridge. Here
everything is for sale. Filthy single-storey brothels service the lorry
drivers. No one is testing for HIV - they don't need to; the infection rates
are near total. Touts rush to open car windows offering petrol, paraffin,
hard currency, all the things that can only be bought on the black market.
Bundles of the monopoly money of hyper-inflation are passed shiftily from
hand to hand.

Everyone knows they are being watched. Mugabe's spies are
everywhere. The secret police of the Central Intelligence Organisation -
plain clothes informants - they are on the look-out for smugglers, border
hoppers, opposition members, anyone who could pose a threat or offer an
income. They are also on the look-out for journalists. The Mugabe regime
would rather the world looked elsewhere, so reporting without permission now
carries a two-year prison sentence.

On the other side of Beitbridge,
there is a new camp for the deported migrants. Wilson is standing behind a
tall wire fence, leaning on an automatic rifle and wearing an outsized
uniform. Despite working as the camp's guard he has time to
talk.

"It's been a quiet day," he says, gesturing in the direction of
hundreds of exhausted looking people standing in a queue that snakes twice
round a white tent. The people are deportees, rounded up in Johannesburg and
dumped en masse back across the border by South African police. "We usually
get about 600 to 700 a day." They are queuing for a meal, paid for by the
International Organisation for Migration. They will then take an arduous
four-hour bus journey north to Bulawayo where many will begin the long march
back to the border. "Most of them will go straight back across again," he
says with a shrug.

As night closes in on the northern outskirts of
the border town, the rusted pick-ups wait for fresh border jumpers. They are
beginning to fan out along the 170-mile frontier and deliver their human
cargo to the staging posts where they can start their dangerous trek
again.

Hours from anywhere in the deep bush, torches shine angrily at the
windscreen. The scratched barrel of an AK-47 pokes through the open window,
holding on to it is a skinny looking soldier. A calm exchange follows.
Questions are asked about the white man in the passenger seat but the
soldier knows the driver so nothing ensues.

"Why do you think he's
out here in the cold in the middle of the night?" The driver asks.

He
answers himself: "He's freelancing. No one pays him to guard this track he's
here to get bribes from the traffickers."

On the other side of the border
the same rules apply. Mistreatment of migrants is commonplace according to
Human Rights Watch and police see vulnerable migrants as a ready source of
income. With no child soldiers or civil war, South Africans don't understand
what Zimbabweans are running from.

Despite the brutal dictatorship in
their northern neighbour only 114 Zimbabweans were granted refugee status
last year. The others are shepherded into disease-ridden camps before being
shunted back across.

Any day now, the rains will come and the greasy tide
will wash away the tracks. Kipling never actually saw the Limpopo or its
fever trees. But when the grey-green water starts to flow the desperate
people will form human chains across the river holding hands to ford the
strong current. Those that can't hold on will be washed away, offering a
darker answer to the Elephant Child who asked: "What does the crocodile have
for dinner?"

State security agents raid civic group's
offices

Zim Online

Saturday 25 November
2006

BULAWAYO - Armed state security agents
on Friday raided the Bulawayo offices of Christian Alliance - an umbrella
grouping of churches, opposition political parties and civic groups - that
is pushing for sweeping political reforms in Zimbabwe.

Four
officers from the government's dreaded spy Central Intelligence Organisation
(CIO) and the police swooped on the alliance's offices and "ransacked the
place looking for documents", according to a Christian Alliance
official.

The security agents had a search warrant required by the
law before they can search private property.

"They just came
and said they were looking for documents. They ransacked the whole office
and it appeared they did not find what they wanted. They left after about
thirty minutes without saying anything much," said Useni Sibanda, the
administrator at Christian Alliance.

The raid comes barely two days
after civic groups and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party,
under the leadership of the Christian Alliance, held surprise demonstrations
in central Harare demanding a new and democratic constitution for
Zimbabwe.

The groups say they shall hold protests every Wednesday
on lunchtime although the government has warned it will ruthlessly deal with
future demonstrations.

Tendai Biti, secretary-general of the
main faction of the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai, described the raid on the
Christian Alliance offices as "barbaric."

"Raiding offices and
viciously attacking activists will not solve the country's problems. These
raids and arbitrary arrests will not put brakes on the gathering momentum of
the national demand for political change in Zimbabwe," Biti said. -
ZimOnline

State prosecutor
Fari Matinhure told the court that the three suspects "arrested" a diamond
dealer on November 9.

But while on their way to the police
station, they illegal set free the diamond dealer and the three failed to
surrender the 1 040 pieces of the precious stone to the police
station.

Two other detectives, Timothy Gombera and
Bhekithemba Nkomo, are also facing similar charges after they allegedly
confiscated an undisclosed amount of cash from South African diamond dealers
while on patrol in Marange.

The two are still to appear
in court after their docket was referred back to the police for
fine-tuning.

There have several reports in the press of
massive looting of diamonds by illegal dealers in Marange following the
discovery of the mineral in the area about three months
ago.

Earlier this month, the Zimbabwe government deployed
armed soldiers to cordon off the area to prevent illegal mining operations
in Marange. - ZimOnline

Months After Big Overhaul, Zimbabwe Dollar Seen Tumbling Again

VOA

By
Blessing Zulu Washington 24 November 2006

A
prominent Harare economist has warned that the Zimbabwean dollar, now
trading in the informal market around Z$2,000 to the U.S. dollar, could
slide to Z$4,000 by the end of December and plummet to Z$180,000 by the end
of 2007.

Economic consultant John Robertson said the country's
economic decline will continue unless the government institutes bold
economic and political reforms.

The official exchange rate was set at
Z$250 to the U.S. currency on July 31 when the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
devalued and lopped three zeros off the currency. The official rate has not
been adjusted since then despite parallel market losses.

Robertson
said in an interview with reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that his currency projection was not overly pessimistic given the
country's huge fiscal overruns and chronic extreme shortages of hard
currency.

The International Monetary Fund has said Zimbabwean
inflation will exceed 4,000% in 2007 unless major changes are made in
economic, fiscal and monetary policy. Central Bank Governor Gideon Gono has
predicted inflation will fall to 50% next year.

IMF Africa Department
Deputy Director Siddharth Tiwari has said there are no limits to how high
inflation could go barring serious corrective measures by Harare.

UN Humanitarian Agency Sees Bleak Outlook For Zimbabwe In 2007

VOA

By
Blessing Zulu Washington 24 November
2006

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs has launched an appeal to donors for US$215 million for
humanitarian aid for Zimbabwe, saying the country's already crippling
economic crisis is likely to worsen in 2007.

The so-called
consolidated appeal unites agencies like the United Nations Children's Fund,
U.N. Habitat, the World Food Program and the U.N. Development Program with
non-U.N. organizations such as Zimbabwe's National Association of
Nongovernmental Organizations, the Danhiko Project, Oxfam-UK and
Childline.

The U.N. office said the funds would go to mitigate effects of
the declining economy on the availability and quality of basic services for
the country's most vulnerable people.

The agency detailed a grim list
of problems looming in Zimbabwe: increasingly scarce inputs for agriculture,
significant food shortages, vulnerable populations on the move, and
"continued impact of contentious human rights and governance issues and
reduced resources for humanitarian programming."

Advocacy and
Communications Manager Fambayi Ngirande of the National Association of
Non-Governmental Organizations told reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7
for Zimbabwe that Nango members need funds in particular to monitor the
distribution of humanitarian aid in the run-up to the 2008 presidential
election.

Mugabe's loyalty to corrupt cabinet allies intensifies infighting

By Tererai Karimakwenda 24 November 2006

Cases of
corruption involving top officials within the ruling party are piling up as
Robert Mugabe refuses to sanction their arrests. His loyalty to some of
them, especially the retired General Solomon Mujuru, has been unquestionable
to date. And whatever hold they have over him is strong because his
continued protection in the midst of mounting evidence is beginning to tear
ZANU-PF to pieces.

Mugabe imprisoned two ministers and several
bankers in what seemed to be a blitz after he established an anti-corruption
commission last year. But critics and opposition officials dismissed the
arrests calling them small fish. They have since maintained that Mugabe is
protecting the real culprits, among them his closest allies.

Solomon Mujuru is husband to Vice-President Joyce Mujuru. It is widely
believed he made her appointment happen, due to his influence over Mugabe,
which dates back to the liberation struggle. But as the battle for who will
take over after Mugabe heats up Mujuru's enemies are pressuring Mugabe to
give the order to arrest Mujuru.

According to an extensive
report in the Mail & Guardian this week Mujuru's involvement in illegal
forex dealings nets him an estimated Z$40 billion a day! The report says
police insiders have dubbed him the "Godfather" of murky foreign currency
dealings in Harare. It also says Mujuru has been investigated by the police
for flouting exchange control regulations and running illegal shelf
companies. Z$40 billion a day is a lot of money. And any government claiming
to be fighting corruption would have arrested Mujuru already. But the
general is not only free. He continues to add more billions to his
stash.

Max Mkandla from Zimbabwe Liberators Voice said Mujuru
helped Mugabe to gain influence with the fighters during the liberation war
so they have a bond. He said: "The real truth is Mujuru is the most corrupt,
uneducated person who has failed to make any meaningful ministerial post in
ZANU-PF just because of illiteracy." Mkandla said Mujuru, who was known as
Rex Nhongo during the war, influenced those in the high command of the
military forces to accept Mugabe. He believes since then they protect each
other and are aware of each other's dealings. He said Mujuru is actually
protecting the first family and the first family is protecting
him.

According to the M & G report, police insiders have said
no top chef in the Cabinet or ZANU-PF's politburo can be arrested or
prosecuted without a directive from Mugabe. The police and Attorney General
are said to adhere to this, but the impunity enjoyed by some is raising
eyebrows as the race for Mugabe's position when he retires
intensifies.

Mugabe running out of begging options as fuel supplies dwindle

By
Tererai Karimakwenda 24 November 2006

The Independent
newspaper reports that Robert Mugabe's recent trip to Iran was a desperate
bid to secure fuel by mortgaging Zimbabwe's mineral resources. This would
not be the first time that Mugabe has used the country's mineral wealth to
guarantee these ill-advised deals. His "look east" policy allows China to
rape Zimbabwe's resources and flooded the country's markets with cheap
products known as "zhing zhongs", forcing many local businesses to shut
down. And there were deals with other countries that gained access to
Zimbabwe's agricultural and mining sectors.

In the end these deals
all go sour because Mugabe can only mortgage so much of the country's
wealth. The Independent report revealed that China and Russia had also
received mineral rights in exchange for financial, trade and investment
deals, the details of which remain shrouded in secrecy. But both countries
have reportedly not given Mugabe any credit lines. Experts say the lawless
business environment that Mugabe himself created has killed any lingering
investor confidence. Soon ZANU-PF will have to travel the world begging at
the doorsteps of other rogue states.

According to the Independent
Iran proposed a number of measures to assist Zimbabwe with fuel and oil
products which the Zimbabwean delegation welcomed. It was agreed a group of
Iranian experts would be assigned to help renovate Zimbabwe's oil
refineries, after which Iran would supply crude oil to meet the country's
fuel consumption needs. In return the report claims Iran was promised
an array of minerals.

The list of countries to whom Mugabe has
attempted to sell Zimbabwe's natural resources is getting longer as he gets
more desperate. Iran joins Kuwait, Angola, Sudan, Nigeria and Venezuela and
China.

Zimbabwe Signs Fuel Deal With Iran

VOA

By Peta
ThornycroftHarare24 November 2006

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe,
center right, reviews an Iranian guard of honor with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, center left, during an official welcoming ceremony in Tehran, Iran,
20 Nov. 2006

Zimbabwe's
state press agency says President Robert Mugabe has secured a fuel deal with
Iran during his state visit to Tehran this week. For VOA, Peta Thornycroft
reports from Harare that Zimbabwe's state fuel supplier continues to be
desperately short of fuel because the country lacks foreign currency for
essential imports.

Mr. Mugabe has returned to Zimbabwe and says he has
secured a pledge from Iran for its technicians to investigate whether it is
possible to resuscitate the country's only oil refinery. The refinery, in
Zimbabwe's eastern border town Mutare, was forced to close almost 40 years ago,
when the world imposed trade and diplomatic sanctions against the then white
ruled Rhodesia.

The refinery was built to process imported Iranian
crude oil.

Now Zimbabwe depends on imported refined fuel, which
it mainly gets by road from South Africa.

It says it has insufficient foreign currency to
import fuel in bulk and pump a minimum of 30,000 liters at a time along a
pipeline from nearest port, Beira in Mozambique to Zimbabwe.

Mr. Mugabe said during his visit to Tehran he has
also secured several other agreements for direct aid and Iranian assistance with
energy, education technology and agricultural projects, but no details have been
revealed either in Harare or Tehran. Zimbabwe has also said it will allow Iran
to explore unspecified mineral deposits in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe's energy and power development minister,
Mike Nyambuya, said the Iranians made a number of proposals to meet Zimbabwe's
needs in fuel and oil products, which were welcome.

Mr. Mugabe was hailed as a hero in Tehran for his
anti-West stance. The Iranian president said, "We are going to stand side by
side with the government and people of Zimbabwe."

Iran is one of the countries Mugabe has been warming
to as part of the "Look East" policy, partly forced by Zimbabwe's isolation from
the West over controversial land reforms and allegedly fraud-marred elections in
2000 and 2002.

Mr. Mugabe claims that Western sanctions have brought
Zimbabwe's economy to its knees.

The United States and the European Union have refused
to issue travel visas to Mr. Mugabe and leaders in the ruling Zanu PF party, but
trade between Zimbabwe and the west continues normally. U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice has branded Zimbabwe and Iran as among the world's "outposts of
tyranny."

Zimbabwe's economy began collapsing after the
commercial agricultural sector, which provided 40 percent of annual foreign
exchange, was decimated during the past six years.

Since 2000, Mr. Mugabe took more than 4,000
white-owned commercial farms and gave them to members of the ruling elite and
landless peasants.

Agricultural economists say statistics show that
Zimbabwe's farming production has slumped to a fifth of what it was prior to the
land seizures.

ZCTF REPORT - Shearwater elephant capture

ZIMBABWE CONSERVATION
TASK FORCE

23rd November 2006

ZCTF STATEMENT ON CAPTURE OF
ELEPHANTS

The news of the capture of 12 juvenile
elephants by Shearwater Adventures from Hwange National Park is fairly
widespread by now. I have just returned from a 3 week trip and was given the
distressing information while I was out of the country. I released the story to
the media while I was away and now that I am back, I would like to state that
the ZCTF is disgusted and disappointed that this cruel practice has been allowed
to take place.

For those who have not yet heard the
story, Shearwater Adventures of Victoria Falls somehow managed to secure a
permit from National Parks to capture 15 juvenile elephants from Shumba Pan in
Hwange National Park. Their intention is to train them for the purpose of giving
elephant rides to tourists. This is in contravention of the accepted policy that
no wild animal will be domesticated.

They managed to capture 12 elephants,
using the Shearwater helicopter to dart them and one died the day after it was
relocated to Victoria Falls.

We have heard that this is not the
first time elephants have been captured in the Victoria Falls areea and we have
an unconfirmed report that at least 2 elephants died following a previous
capture but this is still under investigation.

According to a statement written by
scientists from the Ambelosi Elephant Research Project in Kenya, the breaking up
of elephant families by removing their young creates a very high level of
stress, not only for the captured elephants, but also for the family members
left behind. The researchers have witnessed elephant captures where the screams
of the captured elephants cause their family members to attempt to rescue them.
Both the elephants caught and those left behind were found to suffer physical
trauma, dehydration, immune system suppression and long term psycological
trauma. They claim that due to the excellent memories of elephants, they are
likely to respond aggressively towards humans, vehicles and helicopters in the
future.

The following paragraph was taken from
their statement:

"Elephants are renowned for their
memories, intelligence and sociality. Similar to those of humans, these traits
also make them particularly vulnerable to stress and trauma and their long term
consequences. These effects would be long lasting both for the animals removed
from their families and for those remaining in the reserve. Our strong
recommendation is that the authorities order, with all urgency, an immediate
moratorium on the capture and training of young elephants, and prohibit
all removals of this nature in future"

If anyone would like a copy of the
full statement, please email us on the address below.

The attempted domestication of wild
elephants is not only unspeakably cruel, but it is also very dangerous to
unsuspecting tourists. An elephant that has been trained, will most likely have
been subjected to cruelty and abuse. In order to make the elephant obedient, the
usual method is to break its spirit. This breeds resentment and in time, some
elephants have been known to turn on humans. In Zimbabwe, if an elephant kills a
human, it gets the death penalty.

We are enraged at the fact that since
September last year, we have been doing everything in our power to get water
pumping in Hwange National Park to try and avoid a repetition of the water
crisis of 2005. Many of you reading this have assisted us with funds to buy
fuel, spare parts etc. and thanks to you, there is now water in the park for the
animals. It sickens us to recall that we took a load of tyres to Hwange in a
truck which was sponsored by Shearwater Adventures. We are now questioning their
motives in assisting us. The elephants were captured at Shumba Pan in Hwange
National Park and it's a lot easier to find elephants to capture when the pans
are full of water.

The whole operation reeks of greed and
corruption. The fact that National Parks is entrusted with the protection of the
wildlife, did not stop them from authorizing the capture and what sort of people
would inflict such trauma on these very special majestic animals for the sake of
lining their pockets?

Prof Mugabe's course in basic
economics

FIRST-year
economics students - and budding politicians - should all be obliged to
visit Zimbabwe for a crash course on what can happen when you get the basics
wrong.

Veteran Zimbabwean political commentator Eddie Cross, whose
regular e-mails are one of the few remaining sources of first-hand
information on how people are suffering under Mugabeonomics, reported this
week that dairy farmers had stopped sending their milk to market. Also, many
retail chains had removed cooking oil from their shelves and sent them back
to the manufacturers.

This rather odd behaviour can be explained by
Zimbabwe's price controls, which Cross says have been enforced with more
rigour lately. Since in many cases the controlled retail prices are lower
than the producers can make them for, it makes no sense for retailers to
stock them.

The price-controlled goods are invariably basic necessities
such as bread, maize meal and milk that people cannot do without, so they
inevitably find their way on to the black market, where they fetch far
higher prices than the retailers would have sold them for had they been
allowed to do so.

Ironically, the ostensible reason for the price
controls is to keep a lid on inflation. Yet, as Cross points out, with the
official inflation rate at over 1000%, retailers must make more from each
consignment that comes in to be able to buy new stocks, for which they have
to pay ever higher prices.

Zanu PF star players in corruption game

New Zimbabwe

By
Tendai Biti, MPLast updated: 11/25/2006 00:32:27AS THE Zimbabwean
economy shrinks and as we continue to experience continuous and persistent
negative growth rates, one thing that is not shrinking is the massive
looting and corruption that now characterises the State and senior officials
in Zanu PF.In failed States such as Zimbabwe, the State becomes an arena and
vehicle for personal aggrandisement.

Not only that, the State and the
economy are cannibalised and vulturised through a systematic and well-oiled
machinery of asset-stripping. Indeed, in present-day Zimbabwe, patronage,
clientelism and rent-seeking activities have become a national
religion.

It is an indictment on the regime that 26 years after
independence, Zimbabwe is now ranked one of the most corrupt countries in
the world, with a ranking of 159 out of the most corrupt states.

The
International Anti-Corruption Index gives Zimbabwe the henous index of 2.6
which in the SADC region is only "bettered" by the DRC. In reality, this
means thatonly 20 cents out of every $1 paid by the taxpayer is used for
legitimate national causes. The rest is haemorraged through overt and covert
acts of corruption.

The recent revelations at Ziscosteel in which the
country's two vice Presidents and other ministers have been named and
shamed, reflects a crudity in the magnitude of corruption in Zimbabwe. It
representative primitive accumulation without standard, without national
objective, without rationale and without morality. The looting of funds and
the bribery scams at ZUPCO are an ugly reflection of this unmitigated
aggrandisement.

The importation of fake fertiliser, the pruchase of
useless and substandard aircraft from China are all reflections of the
self-sustaining madness and momentum of this corruption, a momentum and
force which leaves no one in government innocent.

The land reform
programme has been nothing but a massive transfer of assets to cronies and
proxies of the ruling regime. The importation of fuel has become an arena in
which Zanu PF sharks swim at each others' throats. All major parastatals, in
particular GMB, NOCZIM, NRZ, ZINWA, ARDA, Air Zimbabwe, Net One and TelOne,
have become "automated teller machines" (ATM). Of these ATMs probably, the
biggest one is the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).

Local authorities,
chief among them the city of Harare, have traditionally proved to be the
hunting grounds of the ruling elite. They have thus taken a double battering
from corrupt councils and residents in the allocation of stands and other
services.

The most disturbing element about corruption in Zimbabwe is
that it has undermined the value of education and clean hard work ethics.
The youths watch daily as as lazy, incompetent and corrupt people make it to
the top of the social ladder through patronage and clientelism and not
through education and hard work. This complete Zanunisation of the moral
fabric of our society, more than the state of the economy and the barbaric
murders of the innocent over the years, will remain Robert Mugabe's biggest
dislegacy.

Equally unacceptable is the culture of impunity that exists in
the State. The kleptocratic State does not have the political will and
technical capacity of dealing with corruption. The thousands who have looted
farms, the War Victims Compensation Fund, the Pay for Your House Scheme and
the diamonds in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to roam the
country in their air-conditioned Mercedes Benzes.

The Anti-Corruption
Commission is a lame duck legally defined to be impotent and further
disabled by ;ack of independence and institutional resources.

As the MDC,
it is our firm belief that the only way to deal with corruption is by
addressing the political question first. Zanu PF is corruption itself and
the only solution is a new, democratic Constituion, followed by free and
fair elections under international supervision. Without this, not only will
corruption multiply, but so too will the deterioration of the State and the
slow death of the same.

Tendai Biti, MP, is the secretary general of
the MDC faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai

Report Card: Human Rights Council in Downward
Spiral

UNwatch

Geneva, Nov. 24, 2006 - In advance of Monday's renewed
session of the UN Human Rights Council, UN Watch today released a report
card that warned of a downward spiraling of the body formed only six months
ago. The Geneva-based monitoring organization also issued recommendations
for concerted action by democracies to stop the council's
regression.

UN Watch appealed to High Commissioner Louise Arbour to
urgently intervene by taking a more vocal role to ensure council action
against ethnic killings in places like Darfur and Iraq, as well as for
victims of political and religious repression in China, Cuba and Zimbabwe,
and in another 20 countries having the worst human rights
abuses.

The UN Watch report card assessed the council's recent
performance in detail and gave the following grades:

According to UN Watch executive director Hillel
Neuer, despite high expectations following the reform adopted in March, "the
new council has replaced the former commission, but remains a place where
the foxes are asked to guard the chickens." Neuer said the 47-nation body
"has failed to take any action on genocide in Darfur, mass killings of
Shiites and Sunni in Iraq, or repression in Belarus, China, Zimbabwe, or to
scrutinize any other of the serial abusers that require immediate
attention." Instead, said Neuer, contrary to the repeated appeals of UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan for objectivity and universality, "the Council
has devoted 100% of its censure powers to one-sided condemnations of Israel,
in four country-specific resolutions and three special sessions." It has
yet to pass a resolution or convene a special session against any other
state. "Victims of human rights violations around the world were promised
change and they deserve it."

Neuer said that "abuser states
have been more proactive, better organized, and more cohesive than the
liberal democracies and as a result have consistently dominated the debate.
The Council's human rights supporting states must immediately redouble their
energy and start working together to retake the Council, before it is too
late."

UN Watch is a Geneva-based human rights organization
founded in 1993 to monitor UN compliance with the principles of its
Charter. It is accredited as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in
Special Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC) and as an Associate NGO to the UN Department of Public
Information.

Harare-Maputo flight grounded

AIR ZIMBABWE
has put on hold plans to re-introduce a direct flight between Harare and
Maputo after failing to meet the crew complement.

The flight was
expected to begin on December 1, along with the Harare-Kariba
flight.

Air Zimbabwe chairman Mr Mike Bimha indicated in the last
issue of Air Zimbabwe in-house magazine, The SkyHost, that the national
airline would re-introduce the Harare-Maputo flight to for the convenience
for businesspeople travelling between the two neighbouring countries as well
as enhancing tourist traffic.

"We have put the flight on hold
probably until next year. We have problems in the crew complement and we
have also established that we need to further market the route before
resuming the flight," airline spokesperson Mr David Mwenga said in an
interview.

The Harare-Maputo flight was suspended in the mid-1980s
and has gone unserviced since then.

However, the resumption of
the Kariba flight will proceed as planned on December 1. On the same day, Mr
Mwenga revealed that Air Zimbabwe will launch a new route -Harare-Lusaka -
and London twice a week in a code-sharing partnership deal with Zambia Sky
Airways.

The partnership deal is expected to be signed next week.
Under the deal, Air Zimbabwe will also fly the Harare-Lusaka- Lilongwe-Dubai
route.

Mr Mwenga said the national airline had decided to embrace
Zambia Sky Airway in the code-sharing partnership deal signed between Air
Zimbabwe and Air Malawi in July this year to achieve economies of
scale.

Air Zimbabwe and Air Malawi are also expected to sign
another code-sharing partnership deal that will see Air Zimbabwe flying
between Harare, Lilongwe and London and back once a week.

"This
will enable us to enhance foreign currency generation, improve partnership
in the region and minimise operational costs," said Mr Mwenga.

Zim civic groups gather in Johannesburg

By Daniel Fortune
MolokeleLast updated: 11/24/2006 10:23:37ON SATURDAY November 25, all
roads lead to the Holy Trinity Church in Braamfontein in
Johannesburg.

The church's conference hall will be the venue of the
second ever Annual General Meeting of the Zimbabwe Diaspora Civic Society
Organisations Forum.

The Forum is a network of at least 28 different
Zimbabwean civic society groups that are based in South Africa.

It
was formally launched on November 27, 2005, with an initial membership of
about 18 different Zimbabwean CSOs.

The Forum seeks to co-ordinate
the Zimbabwean CSOs common vision and strategy in the struggle for a new
democratic dispensation in Zimbabwe. The vision of the forum is of a
democratic Zimbabwean society where all citizens are able to participate in
all decision-making processes that have an impact on their lives be it at
home or abroad.

The mission of the forum is to promote civil society by
uniting and strengthening the CSO sector to enable it to influence
development policy and advocate for a new prosperous and democratic
Zimbabwe.

The strategic objectives for the Forum have been formulated as
follows:

. The establishment of a strong and vibrant Zimbabwean civil
society in the Diaspora that is well suited to serving the interests of the
poor through building the capacity of the CSO sector;

. To influence
development policies in Zimbabwe, and have ensured that all government
programmes and policies effectively serve the needs and interests of all the
nation's citizens.

This weekend's indaba is expected to have at least 60
participants since each member organisation is expected to send two
representatives. Added to that, several prominent Zimbabwean activists and
public personalities have also been invited in their personal capacities as
observers.

There will also be some participants from the local South
African NGOs that are actively involved in the solidarity campaigns for a
new democratic Zimbabwe.

The AGM is a non-elective one and as such
will not feature the emotional hype and innuendos of electioneering.
Elections will be held next year since the Executive Committee has a two
year term of office system.

That aside, the AGM is still likely to be an
emotive one since there are various debatable issues on the agenda. These
include among others, the Chairperson/Cordinator report, Treasurer's report,
solidarity speeches, among other issues.

However, it is the agenda
item that has its focus on the proposed first ever global Diaspora
conference that might steal the limelight this weekend. It is anticipated
that the historic event will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa sometime
in 2007.

The Diaspora conference will seek to create a global platform
that will discuss both the short and long term role of the millions of
Zimbabweans now living outside the country.

The Diaspora conference
will seek to create a global platform that will discuss both the short and
long term role of the millions of Zimbabweans now living outside the
country. Some of the major outcomes of the conference include the
following:

. The setting up of a global forum and leadership for all
Zimbabwean institutions and organizations that are based in the Diaspora.
The global will also have national and continental chapters all over the
Diaspora.

. The adoption of a visionary policy document that will help to
define the role of the Diaspora in the political and socio-economic
development of Zimbabwe from both a long term and short term
perspective.

. A critical and thorough analysis of both the opportunities
and challenges that are affecting Zimbabweans now living in the
Diaspora

This process is meant to benefit the people of Zimbabwe back at
home. A well organized and co-ordinated Diaspora is most likely to make
strategic interventions on both the political and socio-economic development
of Zimbabwe.

Daniel Molokele is a Zimbabwean Human Rights Lawyer who
is based in Johannesburg. He can be contacted at zimvirtualnation@yahoo.com

Zimbabwe nurses union won't intervene in Australia
crisis

New Zimbabwe

By Staff ReporterLast updated: 11/24/2006 12:27:16THE
Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZNA) will not step into the brewing storm
between Australia and Zimbabwean nurses who are being investigated over
forgery claims, an official said Thursday.

New Zimbabwe.com revealed
last week that the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council (ANMC) had
ordered a stop to the recruitment of new nurses from Zimbabwe until checks
on thousands of nurses already in the country are completed.

In a
message posted on its website, the Australian Nursing Council said: "The
ANMC is currently not processing or accepting applications from Zimbabwe
nurses. We have recently received advice from the Nursing Council of
Zimbabwe that fraudulent verifications have been issued.

"An
investigation is being conducted by the ANMC in conjunction with Nursing and
Midwifrey Regulatory Authorities into these matters. Until the ANMC has been
assured that the information received is authentic and accurate, no
applications will be processed or accepted."

The New Zealand Nursing
Council, meanwhile, is said to be sending a representative to Zimbabwe to
meet Nursing Council of Zimbabwe (NCZ) officials and discuss the forgery
claims.

The ZNA -- the trade union body for public sector nurses -- on
Thursday said none of its members had reported concerns about the Australian
investigation and it would not be intervening.

Doreen Choruma, the
ZNA spokeswoman said: "We have yet to get any communication from our members
affected by the Australian developments. I am sure if any of them were
stranded, they would communicate with us."

Choruma suggested that some of
the information coming from the Australian authorities might be
"propaganda", without elaborating.

The Nursing Council of Zimbabwe (NCZ),
meanwhile, has not yet issued a public statement following claims that it
sparked the whole investigation by claiming that tens of nurses may have
forged their Certificates of Good Standing -- a prerequisite for nurses in
Commonwealth countries to have before they are allowed to practise.

A
woman answering the NCZ phones on Thursday said she had no permission to
comment. She said there would be no official comment until
Friday.

Several Zimbabwean nurses have contacted New Zimbabwe.com in the
past week to complain about delays by the NCZ in issuing Certificates of
Good Standing. This may have forced some nurses desperate to quit Zimbabwe
to forge their papers, they said.

So far, Australian authorities have
revealed that two women were suspended from direct care in South Australia
after their Certificates of Good Standing we found to be
fraudulent.

The Australians have not suggested that unqualified
Zimbabweans may have been allowed to practise.

But for nurses found
to have acquired some papers outside official channels, the prospects look
grim.

Nurses who have been denied registration can be blacklisted, making
it difficult for them to work in any Commonwealth country.

Some
Zimbabwean nurses in Australia are worried about the effects of the
publicity around the investigation on their relationship with patients.
Unconfirmed reports say at one hospital, some elderly patients put newspaper
cuttings about the probe on a notice board and refused to be seen by a
Zimbabwean nurse.

One nurse said: "The worst thing is that the
Zimbabwean nurses in Australia have no representation. If there could be
some union that can clarify all thiswith the council and state facts as
they are, then it will be possible to save thousands of Zimbabweans from
going home in the next few weeks.

"We really have less than a week to
come up with something like a Zimbabwe nurses society in Australia. Maybe it
could help."

Australia, meanwhile, is thought to be considering new moves
to force foreign nurses to undergo a period of unpaid supervised practise
for three months starting in January next year.

Alongside the United
Kingdom, Canada and the United States, Australia tops the list of
destinations for Zimbabwean professionals, political refugees and economic
migrants driven away by a failing economy at home.

Harare Magistrate Dismisses Charges Against Zimbabwean Activist

VOA

By
Jonga Kandemiiri Washington 24 November
2006

A Harare magistrate cleared National Constitutional
Assembly Chairman Lovemore Madhuku of charges that he organized an illegal
protest early this month. Magistrate Chip Matibiri ruled there was no
evidence he had organised the demonstration.

Madhuku, charged under
Zimbabwe's draconian Public Order and Security Act, was free on bial and
represented by attorney Alec Muchadehama, who argued that the demonstration
was organised by the NCA as an entity, not by Madhuku himself.

The
state argued there was reasonable suspicion he committed the offence as some
protesters came from rural areas, indicating an organized effort.

Madhuku
told reporter Jonga Kandemiiri of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe the decision
frees him to devote more time to the NCA and pursue further action - the
National Constitutional Assembly seeks a sweeping rewrite of the
constitution.